Current events involving politics, political office holders, political candidates, world events, local events, crime and other public affairs issues are discussed. Business news items as well as science and technology issues may appear.

Search This Blog

Monday, February 29, 2016

Olathe Northwest student scores perfect 36 on ACT: Greta Lundy, a junior at Olathe Northwest High School, has earned perfect score of 36 on the ACT. The achievement puts Lundy in the one-tenth of one percent of students taking the ACT nationally.

SHAWNEE, Kan. -- It's been a rough stretch for a Shawnee business. No, it's not that sales are slumping. Employees said they are troubled that their store has been targeted by vandals twice in two months.

A thief tried to break into Aqueous Vapor in Shawnee, but they weren’t successful. This is the first time a break-in was attempted this year, but third time since the store opened in 2014.

Saturday, February 20, 2016

KANSAS CITY, Kan. -- The Old Quindaro Cemetery at 38th and Parallel dates back to the mid-1800s. Nearly 500 people are buried there, many who were slaves. There is also an old tree that's still standing, known as "Signal Tree" which symbolized that the slaves made is to the finish line.

The Missouri River was used as a path to escape slavery and the 'Signal Tree' was used to tell slaves if slave hunters were out or whether it was safe to proceed.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Many couples celebrate their lasting love on Valentine's Day, but one area couple committed their love in a new unique way. This couple has been getting ready for their wedding day for some time, but some of the guests were already dressed in their black and white tuxedos.

The couple got married in the penguin exhibit at the Kansas City zoo. More than 50 penguins looked on as the couple made quite the memory.

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. -- A Warrensburg couple got to mix two of their favorite things together this Valentine’s Day: hockey and their love for each other. They were chosen out of hundreds to get married on the ice during a Missouri Mavericks game.

Heart disease for women a major concern: Although long thought of as a man's disease, heart disease is clearly a major concern for women, too. In fact, while so many women worry about cancer, few realize that heart disease is their number...

Friday, February 12, 2016

In 1979, Cadet Vincent K. Brooks became the first African American cadet to serve as a West Point First Captain (cadet brigade commander). Brooks ascended to the rank of four-star general and is currently the Commanding General of U.S. Army Pacific. #DutyHonorCountry#BlackHistoryMonth#LongGrayLine

#NOAA43 (NOAA P3) Crew Chief, Lonnie Kregelka, marshals Miss Piggy out of her parking spot on the ramp and onto the taxiway at Halifax Nova Scotia for another Ocean Winds project flight. These flights through North Atlantic storms are in support NOAA Satellite and Information Service.

Minerals are big business in the United States! In 2015 alone, raw metals and domestically recycled materials were used to process mineral materials worth $630 billion. And that’s actually a *decrease* of 4% from the $659 billion they were worth in 2014.

Broken down even further, in 2015, 14 states each produced more than $2 billion worth of non-fuel mineral commodities, with Nevada, Arizona, andTexas leading the pack. Newcomers Wisconsin and Illinois joined the list in 2015.

Here at USGS, we track about 80 mineral commodities that are essential to the U.S. economy and national security. Every year, we release a snapshot of the global and domestic mineral industry with our Mineral Commodity Summaries. Read more: http://on.doi.gov/1nKCJCK

Image shows brown terraces in the Coeur Rochester mine of Nevada, one of the largest silver mines in the world. Credit: Alan Wallace, USGS.#USGS#Science#minerals#markets

TROY, Mich. (TheBlaze/AP) — A Detroit-area man who had said he walked 21 miles a day to and from work is finding life is much easier about a year after receiving a new car and a windfall of donations, but the downside to that generosity is that he has put on weight.

The Detroit Free Press reported last year about James Robertson’s daily trek to the factory where he worked in Rochester Hills. Shortly thereafter, donors gave Robertson the car and roughly $360,000. He moved from Detroit to suburban Troy.

ATHENS, Ala. – Expecting to write up a ticket for speeding, an Alabama State Trooper ended up helping a woman give birth.

Danny Lowe, of Huntsville, tells news outlets he was driving his wife, Shawna, and their unborn baby to an Athens hospital Sunday morning when he was pulled over by Trooper Michael Kesler for speeding.

TIROS-4 was launched 54 years ago today! One of the Television and InfraRed Observation Satellites, TIROS-4 was designed to test experimental television techniques and infrared equipment in the study of the Earth.

The top and sides of the spacecraft were covered with approximately 9000 1- by 2-cm silicon solar cells, and it was equipped with two independent television camera subsystems for taking cloudcover pictures and three radiometers for measuring radiation from the earth and its atmosphere.

With the exception of the degraded response of the five-channel scanning radiometer, the spacecraft performed normally until May 3, 1962, when one camera failed. On June 10, 1962, the other camera's tape recorder failed. The scanning radiometer provided usable data until June 30, 1962, when its mission ended.

A strong coastal storm hit the Carolinas this weekend. Before it began to move away, it wanted to send an early #valentine to everyone on the east coast. Notice the #heart shape in the clouds from the visible satellite image from around 9 AM Sunday morning! Photo provided by NWS Wilmington, NC

The Universal picture is set around a film about ancient Rome during the golden age of old Hollywood, and has a phalanx of stars including George Clooney, Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, Josh Brolin, Ralph Fiennes, and Jonah Hill.

Online whistleblower Football Leaks has attracted global attention for publishing the contracts of stars like Germany's Mesut Özil. For its latest exposés, the platform has provided SPIEGEL with access to around 60 documents that contain new revelations such as the annual salary paid by Real Madrid to Toni Kroos.

The great Super Bowl Velveeta shortage of 2014 -- otherwise known as #cheesepocalypse -- was a stressful time for queso lovers nationwide. But the lack of available "cheese product" didn't affect anyone as much as Richard Lindsey or Brandon Kraft.

Lindsey and Kraft are members of an exclusive social media community. They were among the earliest to jump on the Twitter bandwagon and snagged their handles - @velveeta for Richard and @kraft for Brandon -- before their respective brand names caught on to the platform.

USDA-ARS maintains a collection of dry beans obtained from around the globe and catalogued for important traits, like resistance to diseases and pests. USDA-ARS photo by Steve Ausmus.

2016 has been named “International Year of the Pulses” by the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN). The goal of the initiative is to educate consumers about the nutritional and other benefits of eating pulse crops, as well as to marshal the capabilities of agricultural research organizations around the world in developing new, improved varieties that will help further global food security and sustainable agriculture.

Over the past 5 years, the Agricultural Research Service has appointed a special team of agency researchers to leverage its expertise and resources in support of the Feed the Future Grain Legume Project, a food security initiative of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

It’s a charge that often has them travelling to communities in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, Central America and the Caribbean, where the challenges of growing pulse crops such as dry beans can be particularly daunting for rural and small-holdings farmers—especially against the likes of bean rust, angular leaf spot and other costly plant diseases.

Besides their robust flavor, diverse color and general heartiness, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization notes that “pulses are a vital source of plant-based proteins and amino acids for people around the globe and should be eaten as part of a healthy diet to address obesity, as well as to prevent and help manage chronic diseases such as diabetes, coronary conditions, and cancer; they are also an important source of plant-based protein for animals.”

ARS’s Feed the Future team—comprising Phil Miklas, Karen Cichy, Talo-Corrales, Tim Porch and Mike Grusak—has already made important inroads to helping ensure broader access to the very best that pulses have to offer—especially in regions where the crops are staple food sources.

Below is a mere snapshot of contributions to date:

Andean Diversity Panel (ADP) —a collection of nearly 500 accessions of large-seeded dry beans of Andean descent obtained from more than a dozen countries and catalogued for important traits, like high mineral content, adaptability to nutrient-poor soils and resistance to diseases and pests.

Discovery that certain genomic regions are responsible for “fast-cooking,” a valuable trait that can reduce the cooking time of beans—thus reducing the amount of fuel needed to prepare meals in resource-poor households.

Breeding and pathology training to East African, Haitian and Central American scientists, particularly in developing locally adapted varieties that can withstand common bacterial blight, angular leaf spot and other bean diseases of concern.

2016 promises to be no less busy for ARS’s “bean team” and their Feed the Future partners—with benefits to consumers abroad and at home. For updates, visit their blog page athttp://arsftfbean.uprm.edu/bean/. You can also read more about their efforts in the February 2016 edition of AgResearch online.

Agricultural research means real results helping real people every day. Agronomist Edgar E. Hartwig has devoted half a century to soybeans research, developing productive plants with built-in resistance to insects, nematodes, and diseases. He is best known for commercial varieties that include Bragg, Lee, Forrest, Lamar, Sharkey, and most recently, Vernal. (USDA ARS photo by Keith Weller.)

Seeing President Obama’s fiscal year 2017 budget proposal and the strong commitment it makes to agricultural research reminds me of Dr. Consuelo De Moraes.

As a university researcher and panel manager of the National Research Initiative (NRI) competitive grants program, I called Dr. De Moraes in 2002 to inform her that USDA was going to fund her research proposal on determining how plants defend themselves against insects, so farmers could exploit the same as a means to control pests. She screamed with happiness. Later I learned that people heard the scream throughout the building at Pennsylvania State University. After that, Dr. De Moraes went on to great acclaim as one of the leading insect researchers.

In 2002, only 24 percent of the proposals submitted to the NRI program were funded. Today, the funding rate for the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI), which replaced the NRI program, that number has dipped to barely 10 percent.

Indeed, during FY 2014, NIFA received 3,875 proposals for funding by the AFRI program, of which 1,640 were recommended for funding, and, unfortunately, NIFA could only fund 390 proposals with the resources available.

In this highly competitive environment, many talented scientists and researchers are unable to get funding and, as a result, are leaving agricultural sciences at a time when the need for their innovation is greatest or taking their expertise to other countries that are more supportive of public sector research. A growing population, climate change, diminishing land and water resources, and the need to ensure food security are becoming ever more urgent. Funding shortfalls become even more daunting when one considers the urgency of new and invasive species of pests, antimicrobial resistance, pollinator health, sustainability, poor public health and nutritional outcomes, and the need for innovations for advanced manufacturing and economic enterprises. Funding research to respond to these challenges should be considered as an investment in our Nation’s future, an investment that will pay big dividends in the years to come.

USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, or NIFA, and its flagship competitive grants program, AFRI, were created as part of the 2008 Farm Bill. At that time, AFRI was authorized by Congress to be funded at $700 million per year.

Since its authorization, Congressional appropriations for AFRI have gone as high as $350 million for this 2016 fiscal year. While every increase during the last few years has been helpful and has catalyzed many more Dr. De Moraeses to make transformative discoveries, there is so much more untapped potential waiting to be discovered and used.

Here are a few recent examples of outcomes resulting from research investments in the AFRI program: new ways to deal with the influenza virus in pigs; increased milk production with fewer resources; innovative and effective ways to manage pests; innovations in irrigation technologies resulting in water savings and improved nitrogen use efficiency; significant boosts in wheat, corn, and beef cattle productivity despite droughts and increasing temperatures; increased profitability of farmers and livestock producers; conversion of biomass into fuel for commercial and military jets; stronger biomaterials from woody and other biomass; development of new sensors to detect and to deal with pathogens of food safety importance without relying on antibiotics; protection of pollinators; significant improvement in children’s nutritional health; and last, but not least, new economic enterprises and jobs.

Imagine the many, many more discoveries, innovations, and solutions that could be catalyzed if AFRI is funded at its full authorized level?

Many, recognizing that our nation’s food security is tied directly to our national security, have called with urgency to increase this funding: the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, members of Congress, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, farm groups, commodity organizations, Nobel Laureates and other scientists, universities, and young people engaged in 4-H and FFA.

That is why I applaud the President’s request for $700 million for AFRI in his 2017 Budget. The AFRI budget proposal includes $375 million provided in the discretionary request, and a legislative action to make available $325 million in mandatory funding as part of a government-wide investment in research and development.

My colleagues and I look forward to working with Congress so that our best and brightest scientists can find solutions to our most pressing societal and global challenges.